Thread: GA/SC Jawing

I enjoy reading some of the things said and have even joined in some. That said, the primary reason I read the forum is to learn to be a better Crappie fisherman. Could we please try not to hijack every thread with this stuff? Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by dhadsock@charter.net

I enjoy reading some of the things said and have even joined in some. That said, the primary reason I read the forum is to learn to be a better Crappie fisherman. Could we please try not to hijack every thread with this stuff? Thanks in advance.

Soory, don't mean any harm. There are a few of us fishing 2-3-4 nites a week but just catchin' a few 10-12 inchers and some small ones, nothing really worth commenting on. Any info you need just ask. I am sure anyone on this board will be more then willing to help. Carl

speaking of fishing.. This is from nighthawk publications.. John's journal has some great articles.
Proven Night Crappie-Fishing Methods

Drop-Offs and Docksides

Editor’s Note: Any time a writer mentions where crappie will be at a specific season, he only can be sure he’s explaining where some of the crappie will be found. During both the cold winter months and the hot summer months, I’ve caught crappie at 2-feet deep and in 20 feet of water on the same day. In the spring of the year during the spawn when the crappie usually are shallow, like you, I’ve taken crappie in 1-1/2- and 15 feet of water. The truth about crappie fishing is there are no absolutes. The suggestions I’ve made this week produce crappie for me most of the time in most of the areas I fish at night in hot weather. Hopefully, they’ll do the same for you.

River ledges and creek ledges can produce hot, summertime crappie action even when the daytime temperatures are 100 degrees or higher. To find and take plenty of big crappie in the hot summer months, determine where the fish are located and where the anglers are not. Night crappie fishermen usually will concentrate where the most crappie fishermen fish. By avoiding the obvious and pinpointing crappie hot spots away from the crowd, you’ll often take more and bigger crappie than most other anglers. Study a lake map. Search for places where creek channels run into underwater river channels. In most regions, these sites will be in the middle of the lake where few other anglers will fish after dark. Once you’ve located these points on your depth finder during daylight hours, tie a weight to a length of monofilament, attach a stick to the other end of the monofilament, and drop the weight into the water to mark the point before dark. Notice a tall tree or some other landmark you can watch for on the bank and recognize after dark. Then when you’re ready to fish, use that landmark to return to your stick, anchor down, and catch crappie. You can use your GPS (Global Positioning System) to mark these spots as waypoints.

Some anglers use trolling motors that also include a multi-function LCD display giving the fishermen bottom depth, surface temperature and other information. The angler can press: depth track to use his trolling motor to keep his boat in a certain depth of water for the best fishing; shore track, which locks on the distance to the shoreline and then tracks and maintains this constant distance, regardless of contour, for fishing riprap and flats; or creek track, which senses the location of a creek or a river channel and then positions the boat directly over the edge of the channel. Perhaps an easier way to fish points is to find them before dark and either start fishing or mark them as waypoints. In many lakes, bass anglers and daytime crappie fishermen have located these same spots and will have sunk brush on them, which will make the underwater drop-offs even more productive.

Anglers who fish for bass at night often fish around docks and piers. Many of these same docks and piers hold crappie too. However, the most-productive crappie hot spot may not be under the docks and piers but rather in front of them. Motor back and forth in front of docks with your boat to pinpoint submerged brush piles with your depth finder. Then you can anchor-down and fish the brush at night. Oftentimes, the best places to fish will be in front of docks where brush has been piled-up on the edges of creek channels. Fishing in front of docks seems to irritate residents far less than fishing directly under their docks at night.

Usually the longer you sit on a site with your lights on at night, the more crappie you’ll generally catch because the crappie will concentrate under the lights. However, when you’re fishing docks for crappie, crappie either will be on the brush when you get there and may bite all night long, or you’ll catch very few crappie on a spot. I only may fish an hour on each of several different brush piles, until I pinpoint which dock has brush in front of it that holds the most-actively-feeding crappie. When I’m dock hopping, I like using floating lights better than my usual Coleman lantern. Then I can drop the floating lights in the water and fish the spot. It I don’t get a bite, I move to my next place.

My favorite lights to fish are those on docks that are suspended out over the water, 2 to 5 feet above the water. Many lakeside residents use dock lights to attract bass and crappie at night. I believe the best way to fish these dock lights is to use light line like 4- to 6-pound-test and small fluorescent corks on ultralight rods and reels. If the water below the dock is deep, and you believe the crappie to be deep, then utilize a slip cork. A slip cork will allow you to cast the cork and the bait out. The line will slide through the cork until it reaches a knot in the line that’s tied at the particular depth you want to fish. Using this tactic, you can anchor well-away from the light, easily cast to the edge of the light and let your bait hold in the depth of water where you expect the crappie to bite. The further you can anchor away from the light, the less likely you are to irritate dock owners.

Even though I usually fish only with minnows for crappie at night, I also carry a wide variety of colors of 1/24- and 1/32-ounce crappie jigs with me. Two other essential pieces of equipment for fishing hot weather with live bait are an air pump, which will keep the water in your minnow bucket highly oxygenated, and an ice pack. A sealed ice pack can be frozen and put in the minnow bucket to keep your minnow water cool without adding chlorine or other chemicals found in ice to the water, which may injure live bait.

Thanks, FS. That's the kind of info I'm looking for. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks I'll get to try some of those tips along with some I've gotten from reading things you and others have written. Working around the house this week along with out-of-state trips last week and next week are cutting into my fishin' time pretty badly.

Originally Posted by Carl Palmer

Soory, don't mean any harm. There are a few of us fishing 2-3-4 nites a week but just catchin' a few 10-12 inchers and some small ones, nothing really worth commenting on. Any info you need just ask. I am sure anyone on this board will be more then willing to help. Carl

Mr. Palmer Thank you for your reply. It's good when we can come together and be open with each other. That bonds our friendship and makes this site a great place to make new friends and learn from each other. Welcome! Jimmy S.

If you click on that link you will find some very good articles on all types of conditions. I have used ideas that work from that website.

Falconsmitty,

Thank you for posting that link. I really enjoyed reading the gentleman's articles.

Regards,

Dave

Well guys I'm always digging...er...surfing up stuff on the web. Anything you want to learn is out there.
In-Fisherman has some good stuff also. here is an article about spider rigging that might teach ya something you didn't think of yet.
http://www.in-fisherman.com/magazine...pie/index.html

Super Crappie Systems
Scaled Down Spider Rigging
by John Neporadny Jr.
The slow-trolling method known as spider rigging has been used for years to catch boatloads of crappies on almost any body of water in any weather and water conditions. Boats toting numerous long crappie poles, from bow to stern, are a common sight on Dixie lakes, where crappie crafts look like mutant water spiders skimming across the surface.
Two crappie tournament veterans have improvised on spider rigging to meet the legal requirements of their home state. Tony Edgar, a Versailles, Missouri, angler fishes the CRAPPIE USA trail, and Charlie Hildreth, a Gaston, Indiana, pro has won two CRAPPIE USA events, a Crappie Angler Sportsman Tour (C.A.S.T.) event, and is a former C.A.S.T. national points champion.
"In a lot of places only one rod and one hook are allowed," Hildreth says . In his home state of Indiana, he can legally use three rods and two hooks per pole. "That allows two people to work six poles and a bunch of hooks when spider rigging, which is just asking for tangles," he warns.
In Missouri, Edgar is also limited to three rods by law, but can add more to his rod holders if he puts his name, address, and phone number on the rods and uses fewer than 33 hooks.
Meanwhile, the CRAPPIE USA trail allows competitors to use four rods apiece for each team member or eight rods for an angler competing individually. So the crappie pros scale down their spider rigging to meet tournament requirements. Sparse rigging has multiple advantages.
Loading eight rods on the front of the boat allows Edgar to comply with tournament rules and have a more stable boat for slow trolling. With two persons standing in the front of the boat, the added weight pushes the boat deeper into the water, stabilizing it, particularly on windy days. This prevents waves from constantly bouncing his poles and making his bait bounce up and down. "If the bait is bouncing around a lot, the fish aren't going to bite it," Edgar says.
Since the gas tank on Edgar's Ranger Fisherman is located in the bow, he keeps the tank full to add more weight to the front. At times he also mounts sand bags in the bow to stabilize the boat in rough water. Placing all of his rods in the bow helps Edgar stay in the crappie's strike zone longer.
"I have my transducer on my trolling motor and the graph is up front so I try to position my boat where we're keeping our lures right over the top of sunken brushpiles," he says. He can also keep his boat positioned over the breaklines of a creek channel by keeping a constant vigil on his electronics. "I'm constantly looking at my electronics and then at my rod tip. It's kind of like watching a tennis match where you keep looking back and forth."
PRESENTATION
Edgar's modified spider system consists of eight 12-foot crappie poles, each equipped with a Shakespeare Wondereel spooled with 10-pound-test line mounted on a Tite-Lok rod-holder system. He usually rigs his rods with two lures or hooks by tying on a three-way swivel and two leader lines of 8-pound test. Edgar's first leader is about 6 to 8 inches long, and he occasionally uses stiffer monofilament to make the hook stand out straight from the main line. He runs a bottom leader (dropper) of about 24 inches for fish holding in a tight school close to cover and extends his leader to 3 to 4 feet for scattered, suspended fish.
Each of Edgar's rigs are weighted with an egg sinker attached to the 24-inch dropper, between the swivel and the bottom hook or lure. He secures the sinker with a double knot about 12 inches below the swivel and then ties his jig 12 inches below the weight. Edgar favors a 1/2-ounce slipsinker for most applications, although he switches to a 3/4-ounce version on windy days. He uses medium-size shiners when he fishes with livebait.
"The main bait on my spider rig is a straight hook and a minnow," he says. "That's simply the most natural bait. If it gets real tough out there, that's what I go to."
He typically uses a #2 gold Aberdeen hook with a flicker or small spinner blade to produce added flash. Most of the time, he also tips the back end of the hook with a Berkley Crappie Nibble, which helps prevent the minnow from slipping off the hook.This adds an appetizer to the menu. Edgar also further enhances minnows and artificial lures by spraying on Kodiak Scent.
A variety of Southern Pro tubes and Crappie Pro solid plastic baits work well for Edgar's spider tactics. He also uses a spinner jighead when crappies are more aggressive in early spring and early fall.
Water clarity determines jig color choices. In dirty water, he uses a lure with a tint of chartreuse. Muddy water calls for dark hues such as black and chartreuse or purple and black; while white or yellow and white, are Edgar's selections for clear water.
At the start of the day, Edgar varies the colors of his lures and the depths of his rigs. "If you start out on your home lake, you kind of know what you're doing already, but on unfamiliar lakes, use four or five different colors of baits and try different depths to let the fish tell you what they want," he suggests. "Start by gathering information from locals and expand from there."
He sets some of his rigs as shallow as 2 to 4 feet, his deepest rigs at 12 to 14'. He rarely spider rigs deeper than 20 feet. "Deeper than 20 feet, I switch back to one rod and jig vertically," he says. Using two different lures on each rig allows him to cover two depth ranges with one rod and facilitates the discovery of the day's hot bait. In clear water, he resorts to one lure and replaces the egg sinker with a split shot to prevent spooking. Once he starts catching crappies with a particular lure color at a certain depth he sets some of his other rigs the same way.
When hovering over brushpiles, he sets some rigs so lures barely tick the top of the cover. His electronics show how high the brush rises from the bottom, which indicates how deep sets should be. After slowly trolling over the top of the brush, he backs up so his lures pass over the cover again. If the brush produces fish, after a couple of passes he drops marker buoys on the spot and continues to work it by jigging vertically with a 10-foot crappie pole and a weedless wireguard jig. This tactic allows him to catch fish suspended above the brush as well as crappies holding tight to cover.
"Summer is when spider rigging works best because crappies hold deeper, out on the edge of the channels, relating to a breakline more than cover," he says. Since crappies can be scattered anywhere along a breakline, he likes his chances of catching more fish by spider rigging with multiple poles rather than trying to vertically jig with one rod. When spider rigging an open bank like this, he slowly drifts along the structure. All he wants the trolling motor to do is keep the boat in line. In effect, spider rigging becomes vertical jigging with eight poles.
Watching his lines helps Edgar determine the right trolling speed for his rig. It should be a vertical presentation. Without lines running under the boat.
He usually drifts with the wind. "I do that because most fish seem to be facing into the wind or moving with it, depending on how deep they are and whether or not a reverse current exists at that depth, and depending upon whether or not they're following baitfish that are following wind-blown veils of plankton. Following the wind keeps me on them." If the wind pushes his boat too fast, he slows the drift by dragging a windsock or plastic bucket behind the boat.
Painting the tips of his rods helps him see his line better, which helps him detect strikes easier. He sprays the tips with a white base paint and then applies a coat of orange. When he sees a tap on one of his poles, he acts immediately. "Most of the time when I'm spider rigging I set the hook as quickly as I see the tap," he says. "The first tap tells me the fish is holding the bait, probably creating slack line. Don't wait for a second tap, which could indicate that the fish just spit the bait."
Beating The Wind
Spider rigging on windy days can be tough, to control both your boat and your lure presentation.
Adding weight to the bow of his boat helps Tony Edgar stabilize his craft in choppy water, but the rolling waves can still cause his spider rig poles to bounce too much. He recalls winning a tournament on his home waters of Lake of the Ozarks by rigging his poles with big corks and leaving slack in his lines to allow the floats to roll with the waves. This presentation kept the baits gently rolling with the wave action rather than bouncing up and down in an unnatural fashion.
If the wind becomes too strong for Charlie Hildreth to control his boat in water less than 10 feet deep, he stakes out an area to fish with bobbers. Hildreth has devised an adjustable two-piece PVC pipe with a T-handle and auger that he can shove into the water and screw into the lake bottom. Then he ties his boat to the pipe and tosses out bobber rigs that the wind pushes through the area.

little bit more from in-fisherman.
ALTERNATIVE RIGGING
Hildreth alters his rigging tactics by using fewer poles placed in strategic locations. He has a series of rod holders positioned in the bow and stern to allow his partner and him to cover shallow and deeper water at the same time. Two adjustable rod holders are placed on the bow, positioning poles toward the front or sides of the boat as needed. His rod holders on the stern are a fixed system for keeping lures or baits equidistant and straight behind the boat.
Sometimes Hildreth places poles on one side of the boat, while he and his partner each hold a rod and jig vertically into shallow cover. This system helps them catch crappies in the cover on one side while taking suspended fish in deeper water on the other. He notes that they usually catch more fish on the shallow side, but commonly hook bigger crappies on the rigs drifting through deeper water. "It covers a lot of territory, and then when I find the exact pattern, I trim the spread down to one pole," he says.
When fishing in Indiana, Hildreth employs a technique he calls "strolling," whereby he holds two rods while slowly trolling, or holds one rod and places two others in holders. "Holding poles helps me detect strikes easier," he says. "A lot of times the bite is so light that even with 6-pound-test line it barely registers as a little tap. It feels sometimes like the jig is bouncing off a tree limb, or picking up a tiny bit of weed when a less active crappie bites."
Sometimes he strolls with the three-rod system, placing two rods in holders at a 45-degree angle on one side of the boat, holding the third pole to vertically jig timber or weedlines on the other side. This allows him to concentrate on shallow fish in cover with one pole while his other poles draw strikes from suspended crappies at depths of 6 to 8 feet.
In open water, he rigs with three poles spread across the bow. He places a pole in each holder on the front sides of the boat and one hanging straight out from the nose. If he finds a brushpile, he slowly trolls back and forth over it, but if he notices on his electronics that the fish are holding tight to cover, he throws out a marker buoy and jigs vertically into the cover with one rod.
He varies the depths and lure colors on his poles, sometimes using livebait and double-jig systems until he discovers which lure or bait is working best that day. "If I'm catching a bunch of fish I go down to one pole," he says. "If I'm just catching a few now and then, I'll try two poles because I need to find what the big fish want as opposed to what all the fish want."
Twelve-foot crappie poles are Hildreth's favorite rods for spider rigging, and a 10-foot version is his choice for vertical jigging. The longer rods get him 2 feet farther away from the trolling motor. Hildreth thinks trolling motor noise and the clicking of his transducer spooks crappies in clear water. He wants his lures as far away from the trolling motor as possible.
He equips his poles with Mitchell ultralight spinning reels or small Zebco spincast reels. When strolling in dirty water, he ties his baits on 8-pound-test line, but he scales down to low-visibility green 4-pound line for fishing weeds in clear water. He uses tubes for strolling--2-inch tubes for murky water and 1-inch versions for clear conditions. He usually inserts a 1/32-ounce jig into the hollow plastic bodies.
His favorite colors include purple and chartreuse, pumpkinseed, blue and chartreuse, black and chartreuse, red, white and black, and white. One of those colors is right for just about any condition. For spider rigging with livebait, he attaches small shiners to a #2 Eagle Claw light-wire Aberdeen hook.
Unlike Edgar, Hildreth feels that trolling against the wind helps him control the speed of his boat better. He can watch his sonar to determine his trolling speed, which he maintains in the range of .5 to 2 miles per hour. When boat speed exceeds 2 mph, it becomes too hard to control the depth of baits without jigs or weights that are too heavy for crappies to inhale.
Hildreth's Motor Guide 756 Brute trolling motor has five speeds with 12- and 24-volt options that give him control of the boat in various conditions. He also has two different trolling motor props for windy or calm weather. Through trial and error with various speeds and props, he has mastered the strolling formula. In dirty water you have to go slow, and in clear water you can go almost as fast as you want.
Pole limitation laws prevent anglers in some states from becoming full-fledged spider riggers, but with a few modifications, savvy anglers can still use a variation of this deadly technique to catch crappies. But even in states with few limits on rod numbers, sparse rigging offers more manageable fishing, with a less threatening, more efficient spread for the fish to react to. Sometimes less is more.

AWESOME INFOR SMITTY..NOW IF i COULD JUST FIGURE OUT HOW TO PUT A TROLLING MOTOR ON MY DOCK AND RIG ALL THIS LIFE WOULD BE GRAND LOL.